Jay McInerney's tales of modern life

Whether it was Edith Wharton at the turn of the 20th century or John Cheever in the 1950s and ’60s, New York City has never lacked for chroniclers of its mores. Perhaps a century from now, cultural historians will plumb the works of Jay McInerney to discern what life was like there in the two decades between the explosion of Wall Street wealth and the grim aftermath of 9/11. His keen-eyed...

A flight of essays

Jay McInerney's A Hedonist in the Wine Cellar, the second collection of his wine columns from House and Garden, is like a snapshot album of wine experiences, featuring a mix of big-name winemakers, exotic locales and big bosomy wines. (Full disclosure: I've shared a couple of rare wine dinners in France with McInerney, but that is the extent of our acquaintance.) McInerney, who describes...

After the fall

Jay McInerney's The Good Life joins the body of fiction grappling with the events of September 11, 2001, and the various landscapes literal, personal, political forever altered by that day. McInerney (Bright Lights, Big City) focuses his attention largely on Corinne Calloway and Luke McGavock, two strangers who have an otherworldly encounter in the early hours of September 12, then meet again...

Even 14 years after his dazzling debut, Jay McInerney is still the whipping boy for the literary brat pack of the mid 1980s, if only because he's the only one who continues to publish. Older critics have always seemed preoccupied with pointing out the flaws of his novels. They jeered Bright Lights, Big City because it was brazenly written in second person. They trashed the satiric Story of My...